Customer Reviews

Introduction To Programming With Visual Basic .NET

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This book is an introductory programming text. To be clear, it is not an introduction to Visual Basic.NET for existing programmers; it is entirely aimed at new and learning programmers with no prior experience. It serves such an audience admirably.

The book opens with an historical overview of programming languages and the nature of problem solving. It then progresses in a methodical and sensible manner through working in the IDE, designing forms using visual components, responding to events, working with primitive data types, handling basic user interaction, conditional statements and branching, looping, procedures and functions, scope, arrays and algorithms, database integration, SQL, file handling, ASP.NET, and classes. This gives the book an excellent depth, with material not usually included in introductory texts but which are highly relevant to the construction of functional software.

An especially nice aspect of this book is the development of a "real-world" financial application at the conclusion of each chapter, giving immediate practical exposure to the theoretical concepts being discussed.

Scattered throughout the book are highlighted snippets entitled "tips from the pros". These attempt to convey wisdom from experienced programmers. Their value is somewhat dubious, as for the most part these do not - as may have been reasonably expected - explain best practices or highlight "gotchas" for new programmers. They do pitch sensible ideas, but which are largely common-sense and hardly revelationary.

Additionally, two other matters are irksome. Firstly, the authors leave abstract data types right to the very end chapter, yet this should perhaps be raised earlier, after primitive data types. Secondly, leading on from the first, the authors title this chapter classes, yet beyond constructing one's own data types there is no real coverage of object-oriented design.

That aside, this is an outstanding and very easily digested work. It is well recommended for beginning coders, giving sound instruction in both the art and science of programming and a solid grounding in a popular and contemporary language.

Had to get the book for a programming class and actually enjoyed reading it. Easy to understand, well written, need more textbooks like this for college students.

Had a poor index and no class library in the back :(